Chemical doped ternary and quaternary transition-metal-based electrocatalysts for hydrogen evolution reaction

Electrocatalytic hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) through transition-metal-based (TMB) catalysts represents a totally sustainable and cost-effective technology for practical hydrogen (H2) production with high purity. Unfortunately, most of the catalysts have the unsuitable hydrogen adsorption behavior and thereby insufficient H2 generation efficiency. The general strategy to address the problem is to introduce various cation or/and anion dopants for designing multivariate TMB catalysts, which comes down to the optimized electronic structures and thus hydrogen adsorption of surface active sites. In this minireview, we summarize the recent significant advances in multivariate TMB catalysts for HER, especially highlighting the contributions of various dopants as the modulator for the host materials. Finally, the remaining challenges and future perspectives on multivariate TMB catalysts for HER are also discussed.